Magnet
by NotesfromaClassroom
Summary: "I'm so glad I fell into your orbit," Watson told him once, but Sherlock is convinced that everyone in his orbit ends up getting hurt. Set after 4 x 16, "Hounded."
**Magnet**

Disclaimer: Just playing! Set after 4 x 16, "Hounded."

"He'll be back."

Watson's words are more wishful than assured. With a shrug, Sherlock sets the three folders on the sofa cushion between them, stands up, and crosses the parlor to the fireplace. The room has grown chilly in the hour since Hawes handed him the _curriculum vitae_ of the three medical examiners who might work with him. _Tolerate_ him, if truth be told. Sherlock doesn't mind being difficult to work with in the pursuit of truth. Any ME worth his or her salt should be well aware.

Since the bombing in the morgue Hawes has been an illustration of pain—at least to Sherlock. The red-rimmed eyes, the haunted look, the faint scent of dried sweat—and more damning, the slips in his work that so far only Sherlock has noticed—typos and a perfunctory tone in autopsy write-ups, and more disturbing, the incident of DNA contamination.

"Call me the PTSD ME," Hawes said. Not so much a joke as a proud man's sidestep when forced to admit vulnerability. Sherlock nodded, recognizing a familiar reluctance.

Behind him he hears Watson flipping open one of the files. The largest one, judging by the sound of shuffling papers. Picking up the poker, he considers whether or not to stir the coals or bank them for the night. He's surprisingly tired—not from the long afternoon and evening of sorting the paperwork from the Baskerville case, but from the accumulated worry about Hawes.

He confessed to Marcus months ago that, his rational brain notwithstanding, he's convinced that the people around him—the people he cares about—are worse off for knowing him. Like a magnet he bends people to his will against their own, and perhaps not coincidentally, sends them down a darker path than they would have freely chosen.

Marcus had been frankly skeptical as Sherlock ticked off his proof: the Captain's divorce, Watson's increasing isolation, Marcus' breakup with the detective from IA. Illogical to assume causation, but there it is. He's gone so far as to look at the psychological literature about young children who lose parents and their subsequent self-blame. At some level that assessment rings true, and his father's recent revelation about Mae Holmes' addiction has only strengthened Sherlock's sense of responsibility.

Now Hawes, too, has been swept up into a whirlpool of grief and drugs. In the past two weeks Sherlock redoubled his investigation into PTSD treatments.

He's read plenty about PTSD since Watson's abduction two years ago. No consensus on the best way forward—some professionals insisting on talk therapy, others just as adamant that rehashing the trauma deepens and worsens it. A confirmation, if he had wanted it, that the brain is, indeed, like an attic with limited storage space.

Watson gave up her regular therapy sessions when she no longer required professional supervision in her role as a sober companion. Still, Sherlock had floated the idea that she might want to reconnect with her therapist, a suggestion Watson brushed off. Soon after that she moved out of the brownstone altogether, he fled to England, and they lost months to unhappiness and miscommunication before reaching a tentative détente with Kitty as the temporary centerpiece of their relationship.

Then after Andrew's death, Marcus's cautionary tale about a partner with PTSD had prompted Sherlock to revisit the suggestion of therapy.

"You're not my mother, okay?" Watson snapped. "She's already doing a number on me. I know myself better than either of you and I'm doing what I need to."

He'd gone so far as to contact Watson's friend Emily, their coffeehouse meet-up feeling like a furtive affair.

"I don't want to intrude," he told her, "but I am concerned."

Emily held her coffee cup to her lips so long that Sherlock leaned forward across the table and said, "Well?"

Emily set her cup down. "Look, Joanie's one of the strongest people I know. Do I think she should see someone? Of course. But I have to grant her some agency in this. If she doesn't think she needs it—"

Sherlock's frustration bloomed into real anger.

"But you don't _know_ —" His voice was a decibel louder than he intended and he forced himself to lean back in the chair and start over. "What you don't know—what no one knows—is how she feels responsible for this man's death. And she's never truly recovered from being _taken_."

A foolish attempt to soften the reality of abduction with a gentler word. Even so, Emily looked pained. At that moment Sherlock decided not to share the details of the nightmares with her—how every few days Watson shouted in her sleep and thrashed so hard that more than once she'd landed a punch on his jaw as he tried to wake her. How when she woke at last she was wild-eyed and shaking with fury, and seeing him, had pressed her head into his chest. They made an odd tableau—Watson tangled in the covers, him perched awkwardly on the side of the bed with his arms around her shoulders until her breathing slowed and she pulled back, embarrassed and apologetic for disturbing his sleep.

"You know I need much less sleep than you do," he told her repeatedly, but she apologized the same way the next time, and the time after that, until he was tempted to admit to her that he spent every night awake in the hallway outside her room, a self-appointed sentry.

"Sometimes," he said, leaning forward again toward Emily, "people who need help don't recognize that need in themselves. It behooves _us_ ," he said, waving his hand to include them both, "the people who care about Joan, to intervene."

As always, calling her Joan instead of Watson felt intimate in a way that put a hitch in his voice. Emily Hankins was no fool. She darted a glance at him and then quickly looked away.

They'd ended the conversation with Emily's half-hearted promise to say something. Nothing had come of it if she had.

He'd briefly considered surreptitiously following Watson if she went out at night but her anger if he were caught—and he had no doubt that she was a keen enough observer to do so—kept him from it. Likewise he didn't hijack her phone with a tracking device, though the temptation was intense. Instead, when she was away from the brownstone he made an effort to distract himself until he heard her key in the door.

"I'm glad I fell into your orbit," she told him once. He wonders if that is still true.

"Shall I turn up the heat?" he says, motioning to the fire with the poker. Looking up, she shakes her head and closes the folder.

"I'm heading to bed," she says. "I have an early day tomorrow."

"Your mother?"

A flicker of dismay crosses Watson's face. "She's seeing a new neurologist. I want to be there. Dad doesn't always know what to ask."

"They're lucky to have you," Sherlock says. A truthful statement, though one he wouldn't have bothered to articulate in the past. An hour ago he'd offered a similar sentiment when Hawes hinted he might take a job in a smaller, distant morgue. _More pay. Less stress. Fewer memories._

Stooping to stir the ashes into a pile, Sherlock listens as Watson says goodnight and heads up the stairs. Her step is oddly syncopated—she's favoring her left foot again. Insufficient warm ups before her morning runs. He makes a note to speak to her about it tomorrow.

In the meantime he busies himself with tidying the last of the Baskerville case files. Once he's certain Watson is asleep, he'll look in her closet and check the wear on the insole of her left trainer. The all-night bodega on the corner carries two brands of shoe inserts. Finding a replacement should be easy.

Or if her shoe is fine, he'll settle on the floor outside her bedroom door, reading or letting himself drift with some light meditation while he waits. For months Watson hasn't had a nightmare—or at least hasn't woken up terrified.

But tonight she's taking her worry about her mother to bed with her. The hair on the back of his neck prickles, as though they are drawn together through an invisible magnetic field.

With a final check of the fire he collects a book from the shelf, a masterful retelling of an infamous French murder trial in 1835, and ascends the stairs. Watson's door is shut but he hasn't heard any movement inside for 17 minutes, sufficient time for her to be in the first stage of non-REM sleep. Tipping his head to the side, he listens again. The faintest regular sigh of Watson's breathing and nothing more. Opening his book, he sits cross-legged where he can reach the door fastest if she cries out.

" _There is not a warmer, kinder me waiting to be coaxed into the light. I'm not going to change."_

That was true once, back when Watson used to scold him for being himself. Acerbic, cruel: His own labels. He's heard himself charged with being oblivious to the needs of others, but that isn't it at all. Not oblivious. Never oblivious. Even if he doesn't want to be, Sherlock is always aware.

 **Notes: I once shared a house with a woman who survived a violent sexual assault. She suffered from night terrors like I've described for Joan, and like Joan, she was determined to soldier through and was angry at any suggestions that she get help. She told me that she felt victimized and powerless and therapy was another form of capitulation. I didn't agree with her view but I had to honor it. I know that some viewers of "Elementary" are troubled that not more has been made of Joan's recovery from the kidnapping and Andrew's death. My experience with a trauma survivor makes me more forgiving of that omission. Likewise, Joan's comment to Gregson that she's staying out of Sherlock's recovery because she's not his sober companion anymore and trusts the NA program rings true to me. At the very least, she's aware that he's attending meetings, and it's possible to keep a watchful eye even when you think no one is looking.**


End file.
